March 1998

Nestlé Smarties winner J.K. Rowling visited the school she used to attend, the Forest of Dean, where she talked to students about becoming a writer and encouraged them to read. At the time, the press noted that the first Harry novel had sold 35,000 copies.

April 1998

The “good humor and pace” of the first Harry Potter novel got it into the top four of the Guardian’s Children’s Fiction Prize.

May 1998

The Scottish Braille Press made a Braille edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Sally McCallum of the Braille Press said, “Everyone was really excited about publishing Harry Potter in Braille because the book was so good and it is important to have good books in Braille for children.” Added author J.K. Rowling, “It is wonderful. I’m really honored that the title has been chosen.”

June 1998

J.K. Rowling paid a surprise visit to Alford Primary School in England, where she read from her novels and took questions from the students.

July 1998

The Electronic Telegraph conducted an interview with Rowling and in the accompanying profile observed, “When her first novel was published last year, Rowling became a literary sensation. The novel won her the Smarties Prize — the children’s equivalent of the Booker. It was sold to eight other countries, netting a $100,000 advance for the American edition, a huge sum for a first novel, almost unheard of for a children’s novel. Such is the excitement about Joanne Rowling that she is being compared to C.S. Lewis and Roald Dahl, who also achieved the rare trick of delighting both children and adults. The secret seems to be that her target [audience] consists of one person: herself.” This article was also the first mention of a possible Harry Potter film deal, though Rowling couldn’t really comment on it at that early juncture.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was published in Britain. Of the book’s arrival in the UK, The Scotsman wrote, “The second novel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, has leapt to the top of the hardback bestseller lists, overtaking adult works with all the élan of a gracefully speeding broomstick. Certainly, young readers have been clamoring for the next installment of Harry’s funny, scary, magical life. It is the book which will keep the beloved offspring quiet for substantial segments of the summer holidays. Yet adults, not all of them teachers or parents avidly curious to learn what has so enthralled their children, are it seems almost equally allured by Harry’s escapades at Hogwarts. This is as it should be. The great children’s books have always transcended petty boundaries of age.”

August 1998

The value of Bloomsbury stock was being driven upward by the success of J.K. Rowling’s creation.

September 1998

The Irish Times offered a story that expressed amazement at the success of the Harry Potter novels, noting in particular that they had knocked John Grisham from the top of the bestseller lists.

In reviewing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Booklist opined, “Rowling’s first novel, which has won numerous prizes in England, is a brilliantly imagined and beautifully written fantasy that incorporates elements of traditional British school stories without once violating the magical underpinnings of the plot. In fact, Rowling’s wonderful ability to put a fantastic spin on sports, student rivalry, and eccentric faculty contributes to the humor, charm, and, well, delight of her utterly captivating story.” Added the Columbus Dispatch, “Published last year in Great Britain and released just this month in the United States, the novel blends a rollicking adventure with supernatural inventions and themes of courage and home. Compared by English reviewers to Roald Dahl fantasies, the novel does indeed bear similarities: flamboyant characters clearly divided into camps of good and evil, an unsqueamish embrace of sorcery, and empowered children who nevertheless remain childlike.”

So many tourists have come to King’s Cross station in London looking for Platform 9¾, the station management decided to erect a sign. (Fionna Boyle)

October 1998

Heyday Films (David Heyman’s company) officially announced its acquisition of the film rights to the Harry Potter novels, with Warner Brothers as official distributors. Said Rowling, “I am in a kind of stunned relief. The talks went on for months and months and at some stages I thought it would never happen. It will be an incredible experience to see in real life what I have seen inside my mind. It will be quite disorientating, but wonderful.”

Bloomsbury expected sales of Harry Potter novels to exceed 300,000 by the end of the year.

November 1998

The AP conducted an interview with Rowling in which she made an interesting comment about the creative process: “I have a very visual imagination. I see it, then I try to describe what is in my mind’s eye,’’ she said.

December 1998

Early in the month, J.K. Rowling sat for an in-depth interview with National Public Radio.

In a short profile of Rowling, Newsweek wrote, “Rowling’s Cinderella-like story began eight years ago in Edinburgh. An unemployed schoolteacher and the divorced mother of a three-month-old daughter, she began to write out of desperation, convinced that she had nothing left to lose. To escape her chilly flat, she wheeled her daughter’s stroller through the streets until the baby fell asleep. Then she would dash into a coffee shop and write. Unable to afford either a word processor or the cost of copying her manuscript, she typed it out twice and sent it off to publishers. The day her English publisher bought the story, she says, was ‘comparable only to having my daughter.’”